...where to begin. Tom got married last weekend. Was one hell of a fun weekend. I was a bit worried it would be too uncomfortable, out among the orange trees, but the weather turned out great, Brennan and Isabelle brought an RV, and we all had a good time (and punched oranges).

Got to fly the little RC heli out there too, which was fun.. so when I got back I finally installed the upgraded symmetrical rotors, new motor and heatsinks, and LiPO battery and voltage alarm. Flew it inside today, though didnt do anything fancy since I'm not that good yet.

I heard back from Mackie, with a response that stupified and angered me. They only license documentation for the MCU under NDA to select companies (as in, not us). They don't seem to care about their customers, just their own (less than obvious to me) interests. I can only hope I don't get the same nonsense from Propellerheads, because I think people using REAPER will want Rewire more than full MCU support anyway (REAPER already supports the MCU somewhat, but without doing a lot more research it can't do all the fancy things that the MCU is capable of). Sigh. The pain of trying to enter a market that is very established and saturated. But I'm only mildly deterred. If Propellerheads *does* dick me around, I will do one of two things-- either go to Stockholm and try to convince them with beer (though don't get any ideas, guys), or just do what I've been meaning to for a while, and port JACK to Windows.

Speaking of Windows, after BootCamp was released, Steve convinced me to get (at a discount at least) a MacBook Pro. So I did. For running OS X it's pretty good, but as a Windows XP laptop it really kinda sucks. There's a few driver issues that need fixing (no backlit keyboard in windows, sound always goes out speakers, using the built in camera causes BSoD, etc), but the big hardware issue is that the Mac keyboard is lacking keys. Specifically: insert and backspace(delete). I did find some good 3rd party utility that does help a lot allows all sorts of remapping, and enabled the mac's FN key. And finally, the thing gets HOT. I guess that's to be expected with 2x 2ghz cores, but still. I got spoiled by my little Sony's 1ghz P-M that runs nice and cool (and granted, slow).

Oh yes, and southpark this week was SO awesome.

Recordings:

notthefirsttimealone